I think the use of an RTOS on the RC would be very beneficial to the forward progress of the FIRST program. Is it absolutely necessary? No, not at all. But, with the size/cost ratio of computing power going down by the day, we should really try to pack as much punch into our controllers as possible.
I think a problem with our current RC architecture is there is a real cap on innovation. Without interfacing to an external controller, there really isn't too much you can do with the standard hardware. Bringing an RTOS to the RC would open the door to networking, file systems, threading, and a multitude of other features. We could start using a modular, service based back end to handle I/O data. And with cool stuff like
this floating around on the net, there's only more incentive to use an RTOS which can interpret anything that can be compiled to run on it.
Whether or not the controller uses an RTOS, I think it is very important that the development environment be freed up. Windows only software like the C18 compiler has got to go. There are a multitude of users who would like to run another operating system and are left in the cold without installing C18 in WINE. Yuck!